February 16, 2025
Supporting music education for low-income children and musicians in need, welcome to the new, free digital college textbook for music business majors.
Forty years ago in 1985, technology enabled the music business to formally embrace measurable daily data when Mediabase introduced monitored radio airplay, which at the time was the primary source for music discovery and promotion. The shift accelerated in 1991 when Billboard began using Nielsen SoundScan tracking of record store sales, ending decades of anecdotal and sometimes manipulated self-reporting.
Long gone are the simple transactional times when a consumer bought an album at a record store and disappeared from view. Today, let’s say that John is in a cafe having breakfast and hears a song he likes on the speaker system. He thinks, “Shazam says it’s the new Zach Bryan. It’s pretty good; I’ll give it a ‘thumbs up’, add it to a couple of playlists and follow him. I could start a Zach playlist and see what else comes up. Maybe check out his social pages and follow him there, too. Some of his videos are great. I wonder if Zach will be coming to town for a concert.”
In the music business, John’s actions and impulses are all recognized as metrics – behavior in the form of indexes and statistics revealing important stories about how the artist and song are doing. Sometimes the data can even be predictive. Today, nearly everything involving how consumers interact with artists and music is trackable, making music research a part of almost every role in the business. Various “dashboards” show which and when songs are being listened to, if they’re heard from start to finish, whether people like them and for how long, if they’re shared, if other media influenced their “consumption” and how “engaged” the consumers are.
The importance of following an artist’s progress at reaching an audience – from music discovery to becoming a follower, fan and ultimately, a super-fan – can’t be overstated. Data significantly influences whether the artist gets signed to a label deal, receives radio airplay, is chosen by streaming curators and algorithms, is able to tour strategically, generates an active following and ultimately, becomes successful. Analytics also offer defensive virtues, becoming increasingly valuable for detecting stream fraud, identifying “fake” artists and tracking of unauthorized use of AI to appropriate songs, playlists and artistic individuality.
Detailing the many roles data plays in all facets of the music business, The Metrics of Music: A Field Guide To Music Research is a new textbook becoming available for classroom use in 2025. Its purpose is to familiarize college music business students with several forms of media, tools of the trade and myriad ways creatives and industry professionals study artistic performance and audience behavior to advance their priorities. The Metrics of Music, which lives online so that it can be continually updated, explains how music research plays a part in everyday practices, planning and decision making.
Featuring colorful photos, graphs, charts and tables, The Metrics of Music currently includes more than 650 pages of content and more than 900 citations and sources. There are 12 sections: audio and radio; music streaming; social media; copyright and royalties; music licensing and sync; music analytics platforms (including a separate section on Chartmetric); airplay and music charts; audience research; touring; executive “PROfiles”; and resources and reference materials.
The Metrics of Music is free of charge to professors and students. Instead, users are encouraged to donate any amount to one or more of 20 renowned organizations supporting low-income music students and musicians in need.